Integrating Theory into Practical Emergency Management

Theory without practice is lame, and practice without theory is blind. This is an old saying, but it bears repeating because too many emergency managers are inclined to dismiss academic research as " ivory tower " abstraction. They do not realize that the best research in emergency management is essentially the study of past and current practices, conducted for the sake of establishing clearer principles and strategies for the improvement of future practices and standards. Practitioners who are unwilling to make use of the theory of emergency management are, in a sense, ignoring the important lessons of the vocation itself. Since this neglect compromises planning and undermines institutional resilience from within, it should perhaps be considered more hazardous than any other human-caused hazard. That said, it is unhelpful to advise the majority of emergency managers not holding graduate degrees in social science to devote significant time and energy to the perusal and application of research while additionally carrying out a full range of professional responsibilities. Neither is it helpful merely to recommend a degree of familiarity with current scholarship, since cursory knowledge can lead to greater error than no knowledge. It is crucial that emergency managers exploit the resources of academic learning, but how they are to accomplish this difficult task has yet to be established. Emergency management has evolved since its beginnings in civil defense, when professional expertise was defined in terms of military and emergency service experience. Increasingly, academic training is replacing the technical training of the past, and this shift in the foundation of the discipline is reflected in the recent rise of graduate programs offering social science degrees in the study of disaster and emergency management. " One of the hallmarks of a profession, " says Canton, " is a specialized and theoretical body of knowledge, " but " for much of its history, the emergency management discipline has considered this specialized body of knowledge to be the skills relating to emergency response " (38). These skills alone, essential as they are for emergency operations and tactics, are not suitable requirements for a professional emergency manager: " The theoretical knowledge that forms the basis of emergency management lies not in these technical skills but in social science research and a deeper understanding of the nature of disaster and the reaction of people and organizations to crisis " (38).